A Rant on What You Should Call Me

Dump those words!!! The Forward has printed my argument for banning E-words and the like, with this great illustration by Kurt Hoffman. It's part of the Forward's new Aging section.
You can see all the stories at this link , including mine. Or just keep reading:.

Elderly. Senior. Senior Citizen. Aged. Olster. Old.

The words rile. They’re not me. I ski, scull, climb mountains, blog, freelance and, yes, enjoy sex, even as I qualify for Social Security. Nor do they describe an energized generation of 60 and 70-somethings and beyond, many of whom shun the word “retirement.”  These men and women may be leaving longtime careers but they are not “pulling back,” which “retire” (from the French retirer) means.

Instead, many are moving on to new challenges and to exhilarating pursuits – bringing their expertise and education to other venues, developing latent skills and creativity, and competing athletically at the highest levels.

Take the Boston Marathon runner shown repeatedly on TV in April as he was knocked to the ground by the first bomb. That was Bill Iffrig, 78, who then stood up and finished the race.

What got me ranting about words used to describe people of a certain age? It was a news story last year about  a woman who fought off a purse snatcher. She landed in the hospital with broken facial bones – but still had her purse. The reporter called her “elderly,” and quoted a police officer who said she was, “like most grandparents, a little feisty.” She was 66.

Now I understand the insult my parents felt when, in their 70s, they came through customs after a ski trip. “What’s in the big bag?” the agent asked.

“Skis,” they said. The customs agent lifted an incredulous eyebrow and laughed.

Older people have long felt diminished by such condescension. In 1940, the industrialist-philanthropist Bernard Baruch (at age 70) reportedly said, “Old age is always 15 years older than I am.” Since then, however, American lifespans have expanded significantly.

In 1960, a newborn could expect to live to age 70. Today it’s 78. And those who make it to 65 can expect to live another 19 years, to age 84 on average.

People who leave careers in their 50s or 60 may well enjoy 30 more years of dynamic life, before they become frail and infirm, perhaps rightfully called “old.”  And the cohort of healthy older folks is exploding. In 1940, nine million Americans were over 65. Today there are more than 42 million – a big group to offend, with the Boomers just entering the frame.

Anna Quindlen, in her book  Lots of  Candles, Plenty  of Cake, also rails against the word “elderly,” which she admits to having used “with casual regularity” as a younger writer. Now 60, she admits that as she aged, ‘‘elderly’’ seemed “more and more pejorative … When people lived to be 65, 60 was old. When they live to be 80, 60 is something else. …So we face an entirely new stage of human existence without nomenclature, which is an interesting challenge, because what we call things matters.”

To keep pace with the changing times, Elderhostel got rid of “elder” and became Road Scholar in 2010. Today,  programs once aimed at “seniors” are now for “life learners.” AARP wants you to forget that its acronym once stood for the American Association for Retired Persons.

The idea of “adolescence” didn’t exist over the centuries when children went straight to adulthood, working in fields or factories. That changed in 1904 with the publication of psychologist G. Stanley Hall’s Adolescence. Now there’s a drumbeat to name yet another emerging demographic, the one before frailty and dependence set in.

In her 2006 book, Doing Sixty and Seventy, Gloria Steinem writes:  “I’m beginning to see that life after 50 or 60 is itself another country, as different as adolescence is from childhood, or as adulthood is from adolescence--and just as adventurous… If it’s to become a place of dignity and power, it will require a movement as big as any other.”

In recent years, writers, sociologists and others have proposed names for life post-60 or so. Parade Magazine readers, in a contest, suggested “seasoned citizens,”  “geri-actives,” “zoomers,” and “wellderly.” Others have proposed “third age,” “third act,” “middlesence,” “late middle age,” and “life- take2.”  

Marc Freedman, a leader in the movement to recast the image of older people, founded Encore.org (formerly Experience Corps) and the Purpose Prize. “Never before have so many people had so much experience and the time and the capacity to do something significant with it,” Freedman writes. “That’s the gift of longevity.”

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, titled her 2009 book The Third Chapter and calls this time of life  "the generative space that follows young adulthood and middle age.”

Anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, in her 2010 book Composing a Further Life, argues that the challenge in growing older is to continue to find ways to contribute, drawing on “the wisdom culled from long lives and rich experience.” Conversely, society’s challenge is “to recognize that contribution and to benefit from it instead of dismissing it.”

So, what to call people like me? I’m okay with “older person” or “late middle aged,” which is how I feel. Better yet, I’m in my “encore” stage of life. Or you could just cite my age, 67.

Perhaps Quindlen says it best: “After the middle ages comes the renaissance.”

Follow my blog at www.UnRetiring.blogspot.com or on Twitter @unRetiring

Happy Fernandez--Her Latest Mission

Photo by Steven M. Falk, Phila. Inquirer

Just 10 days ago,  on the eve of lung surgery,  Happy Craven Fernandez sent an email to friends and colleagues, closing with,  “Please do not send flowers or gifts etc. Non-profits in this region can always put dollars and cents to good use.”

Happy, who retired last spring from her post as president of Philadelphia’s Moore College of Art and Design, was like that. Whether running for  mayor of Philadelphia (1999), serving on City Council (1991), or teaching at Temple University and launching child advocacy programs, she poured her energy into benefitting her community.

 Last summer, while reveling in the freedom, at last, of a rare vacation in New England, she had also spent it strategizing her next step.

With fulltime work behind her, Happy was plotting out her ‘encore career.’ She had decided that she wanted to mentor women engaged in non-profit and public service work so that they could both fulfill themselves and better fulfill the missions of their organizations. But she wanted to do this in the biggest and best way possible.  So she brought together 22 of the city’s most prominent women – leaders who, like herself, had long and successful careers in the non-profit world. The group included a law school dean, a TV executive, as well as board members and leaders of some of the city’s most prominent 501(3C)s.

And, lucky for me, because of my focus on “unretiring,” she swept me into her fold.

I felt fortunate to be able to watch the process as these talented, influential women debated the best use to which their expertise and energy could be put. Should they focus on younger women just launching careers? Or people in mid-career reaching for leadership positions? Maybe their mission should be nurturing non-profit boards, some of which struggle to be effective and some of which are simply dysfunctional. Or should the group focus on advocacy – looking to foster change in organizations in which women are under-represented?

After several meetings (the last, with Happy at the helm, was just two days before her surgery), the group was beginning to coalesce, to harness their skills to a higher purpose.

With Happy’s leadership, they were (to quote Marc Freedman, the guru of the Encore Career movement) blending “clear-eyed pragmatism and the determination to make a better world, the idealism of a generation tempered by years of experience at making things work.”

Will this continue without Happy, who died today following a massive stroke three days after her surgery? What’s the most effective way to harness the collective power of women with non-profit expertise? And to what end?

Send along your ideas and I’ll share them with the group Happy launched. Perhaps this will be yet another legacy she would be proud of.

Carol Greenfield: Pioneering What's Next

Carol Greenfield, thinking creatively about  life's next stage

Way before I even contemplated a blog on the transition out of careers,  Carol Greenfield was plowing the new turf of "what's next," sewing seeds and watching them spring up into a movement. 
That movement has a lot of names at this point. Encore Life, Next Generation, Third Age, Third Generation.
But Carol was there near the start. She told me about a seminal meeting she attended in 2001 where a guru of the engage-the-aging groundswell,  Marc Freedman, invited about 75 Boston area aging experts “to propose a new paradigm about what aging could look like in the future,” Carol said.

Even the word “retirement” had to go, the group declared. “Retirement as we’d known it was created by real estate and financial services entrepreneurs,” Carol explained, specifically Del Webb, who in 1960 launched the idea of people retiring to a place (Sun City, Ariz.) where “everyone was the same age, played golf and shuffle board and ate out.” 

The idea of age as an asset -- not a liability -- which Freedman was espousing, resonated with Carol who noted that,  “People have talents and assets at this age.”
 Freedman went on to establish the concept of an Encore life stage and write Encore: Finding Work that Matters in the Second Half of Life,  and founded the Experience Corps and Encore.org.
Meanwhile,  Carol, a Boston gerontologist, launched “Discovering What’s Next?”  which started 10 years ago with a meeting at the Newton Free Library.  From that first day, when about 150 people showed up, it has blossomed into a hub of connections for people 55 and over seeking volunteer work, paid work in the profit and non-profit sectors, transition support groups and more.  The group's name was selected and trademarked, Carol said, to convey a time that's  “positive, exciting and optimistic.”  

“This generation is the first to look forward to 30 to 40 more years -- maybe more than their working years, “ she said.   To look at that as one chunk was no longer realistic. 

The “encore” lifestage, is a time when people “are interested in work, but work with personal meaning and social impact.”

But there's a mismatch. The non-profits, who desperately need the skills of this burgeoning group, don’t know how to take advantage of this talent pool. 

“In addition to age discrimination, there is the feeling that experienced adults want to make big salaries; or young staff are uneasy having people the age of their parents report to them,” Carol said.

Not one to shirk a challenge, she stepped up to help address the problem --even as her husband, David Greenfield was winding down his dental practice to focus on his own encore life stage as a photographer. 
Carol created a partnership between her Newton group and JVS Boston, which this summer brought to town a venture that is putting down roots around the country. ReServe, Inc. -- Innovative Staffing for Non-Profits --matches post-career “continuing professionals” (ReServists) with non-profit and public sector groups in dire need of their services. It’s a win-win-win:  ReServe Greater Boston offers a framework to help the organizations define their needs and connect them to experienced and enthusiastic talent. The groups pay $15 an hour to ReServe, of which $10 goes to the ReServist as a stipend.
"So many people are eager to do meaningful work and make a little money and stay productive," she said, but without such a framework, they had little way to find a position that engaged their skills in a rewarding way.
Yo, Philadelphia! ReServe is now in New York, Maryland, Florida, New Jersey and Wisconsin, not to Any ideas on launching it here?